KINDER'S COMMENTARY: `THAT GOVERNMENT IS BEST WHICH GOVERNS LEAST...'

"... a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."

-- Thomas Jefferson, Inaugural Address.

Across America the last year or so, a widespread, bipartisan movement has gathered momentum. Its purpose: to resist an arrogant and overreaching federal government and to restore a proper balance between the national government and the states. Jefferson, whose credo was "That government is best which governs least and is closest to the people" would have approved.

Item: In more than two dozen states including Missouri, legislative bodies have passed resolutions calling for a national Conference of the States to be attended by delegates from all states. Purpose: to redress the bloated power and unrestrained reach of federal mandates and to restore balance to state-federal relations.

Item: A crucial portion of the Republican Contract With America, and one of the first to be passed by both houses and sent to President Clinton this spring, was one of its most radical proposals: the prohibition on unfunded mandates. No longer will the federal government be able to act as though it possesses a limitless warrant to impose its will, heedless of the cost, on states and localities.

Item: A small group of Republican governors, including Jim Edgar (Illinois) and Pete Wilson (California) are challenging federal power across the board. Faced with the Motor Voter Act whose passage was among the proudest boasts of President Clinton's first year, the governors have revolted. They have directed their attorneys general to sue the federal government, alleging, even before passage of the new prohibition on unfunded federal mandates, that Motor Voter's imposition of costs are unconstitutional overreaching by the feds.

Item: A handful of states, including Missouri, California, Pennsylvania and Illinois, have in one manner or another challenged federal requirements imposed under the Clean Air Act of 1990. The clean air amendments, which require that billions be spent for state-run inspection systems for automobile emissions, ignited a bipartisan revolt that has flat-out told the feds that the answer is no. In Missouri, resistance was led by Democratic state senators John Scott of St. Louis and Bill McKenna of Jefferson County, whose constituents would have been forced into interminable lines. The feds were threatening uncompliant states with a cutoff of federal highway money, which would have routinely caused state-level cave-ins in previous years. This time, it didn't work. Emboldened by a series of votes in the Missouri General Assembly, Missouri Sen. Kit Bond attached an amendment to a bill moving through Congress that prohibited the Environmental Protection Agency from spending money to enforce these particular clean air regulations.

These are but a few examples of states' acting to limit the reach of federal power. The trend is gathering adherents and momentum week by week. This is a long-overdue trend that is enormously healthy. It is also squarely in line with Jeffersonian wisdom, when he eloquently stated, "I believe the states can best govern our home concerns, and the General Government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore, to see maintained that wholesome distribution of powers, established by the Constitution for the limitation of both; and never see the officers transferred to Washington where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market."

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.